IAC Interactive Shares Leap after Company Split

Shares in IAC InterActive, run by media veteran Barry Diller, rose more than 9 percent Thursday after the company was divided into four publicly traded entities and IAC announced a one-for-two reverse stock split.

The reverse split means that for every two shares of IAC held before the spinoffs, investors will now hold one share of IAC. Such moves raise a company's stock price but do not change its overall market value.

IAC also said that, as part of the division, for every share of IAC common stock held as of Aug. 11, shareholders received one-fifth of a share in home shopping network HSN, time-share business Interval Leisure and ticketing service Ticketmaster. They also got one-thirtieth of a share of lending and real estate business Tree.com. (Watch the accompanying video to learn more about the spinoff...)

Tree.com rose as much as 19 percent, before erasing most of those gains.

Shares in its other spin-offs Ticketmaster and HSN also rose as investors rearranged their portfolios in typical trading dynamics after a restructuring. Interval Leisure shares fell 4 percent.(Contd.)

"What we would expect is that they'll trade for a while below fair value," said Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay.

He added it could take months for the volatility in the stocks to subside as some fund managers are obliged to sell shares in the new companies that are no longer in the S&P 500 index. Also, the newly-created companies are smaller-cap stocks, leading some fund managers to pare down their holdings.

Lindsay said his 12-month price target was $26 for IAC , which will focus on Web media and subscription businesses. Shares were up $1.44, or 9 percent, at $16.80.